


A Good Day on the Field

by sneebs



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 13:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15195737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneebs/pseuds/sneebs
Summary: Reyna and Rachel are soccer players, and Reyna gets distracted.





	A Good Day on the Field

It was a good day on the field.

Cloudy, with the taste of mist in the air. Cool, not cold. Just how Reyna liked it.   
It was a good day to dominate.

Coach Lupa lounged in a chair on the side, relaxed, aloof, invested in throwing a stick to herself and catching it. Although she couldn’t quite care less how the outcomes of games were, she still paid enough attention to remind her players to suck it up at times when they needed it. Glancing to the side, a raised eyebrow told Reyna what she needed to hear.

_Kick their asses._

Reyna nodded tightly and swept her gaze over to the other team, eying them with a calculating poker face. It surprised her to see stormy eyes calculating right back at her. 

They met each others’ gazes and immediately they both hardened. A challenge, Reyna could tell, and a little knot of tension and excitement flickered within her. Her eyes directed themselves like quiet bullets towards the rest of the Greeks and felt that knot loosen- some girl with choppy, feathered, braided hair was busy splashing water on everyone else; another stronger, bulkier girl had a strange habit of wandering around punching her teammates; another girl with a short, spiky, black pixie picked her fingernails and pouted. 

Her team was in a line, quietly talking about strategies for the game ahead. Her team had faces in focus, faint smiles on their faces, a readiness to them, and organization. Her team was a team.

What were the Greeks, exactly? 

A whistle, and a call for players on the field. Reyna’s head snapped into the game, and she and her team jogged in sync onto the grounds. The Greeks stumbled.

She had been taught never to underestimate your opponent until you’ve truly defeated them, but she still could make instinct deductions. 

She deduced, with a silent bemusement, that the Greeks might not be their biggest competitor.

********

As it turns out, Reyna was wrong. And she also wasn’t wrong- technically, the Romans were winning.

But by one.

And the Greeks had turned out to get serious quickly. Their teamwork was astonishingly surprising- the one with braids was good at noticing everything and helping out where she could. The strong, muscular one, provided as the power when they needed it, and seemed to have trained herself to know when to butt in or butt out. That spiky-pixie chick-  _Thalia_ , Reyna remembers- turned out to be able to run with a boundless, eternal energy and agility. 

And that gray, stormy-eyed girl that looked like her head was drowning within itself was very, very, very good at going head-to-head with Reyna herself.  
She loved it and hated it. A challenge. Something to get lost in. Worry, fear, adrenaline, emotions heightened.

Gwen had managed to block every goal, of course, but each kick was worryingly getting fiercer and fiercer, more direct and focused. And suddenly she and Stormy-Eyed over there were facing off, and Stormy Eyed aimed for a kick to the left, and Reyna turned, and there was someone running straight at her, and they fell in a crumpled heap together.

A whistle was called, but Reyna could barely hear it, letting surprise shatter onto her body. And then she shook her head and let her eyes focus-

Ruby hair fell in free, twisting stems around the girl’s freckled face. Emerald-eyes. Ah. She’d been the one that generally hung in the back and called out orders with almost terrifyingly correct predictions on how to get around the Romans… Other than that, though, she was dismissed early on as not much of a threat.

A bubbling grin of sunshine had managed to spread across the girl’s face as Reyna struggled to remember the girl’s name, attempting to get up as yells started to come back in focus. And that might’ve been the end of it, with Reyna refusing to let a stupid fall get the best of her, and maybe the girl would be given a yellow card or something, if she hadn’t reached out with a slender, dainty, fairy finger and tapped Reyna’s nose, her lips too bright and too close to Reyna’s cheek-

“Did you just fall for me?” something like shocked delight flooded the girl’s tone, and right then Reyna snapped, her hands suddenly getting nervous and her body suddenly being too close for comfort, too much, too afraid-  
 _Afraid_? Since when has Reyna ever been  _afraid_?

She pushed the girl off of her, this odd, messy, fairy-haired girl, and at that moment remembered her name.

“Rachel.” It slipped off her tongue before Reyna could stop it. She stared at the girl in horror and dug her nails into her palm. How was Reyna suddenly- in the span of five seconds- completely out of control?

Rachel’s mouth hung open, slightly, and she regarded Reyna in a new, foreign way that Reyna didn’t like-  _no no no_ , her pulse screamed at her, quickening,  _you definitely don’t like this_ \- one bit. 

She gritted her teeth and turned around, the referee screaming at her, waving his hands. Rachel had been given a yellow card.  _Good_ , Reyna thought, pinching her skin, focusing on the next play, focusing on the next formation.  _Good_.

She’d managed to get into the game after that, which flooded her body with subconscious relief.  _Don’t let a stupid fall fuck you up_ , was what she drilled into her head.  _A small mistake, nothing more_.

But she never… quite… got lost in it, really. Her concentration went deep, but not to her deepest level. Annabelle-  _Stormy Eyes_  - managed to get by her a couple of times, and thankfully didn’t manage to make a goal. Her teammates knew something was off, a bit, too- they were playing good. But they weren’t playing great.

Something was just… there, in the back of her mind, on the back of the field, calling out creepily on-point orders, smiling softly and carefree at Reyna out of the corner of her eye-

Near end of the game, and Reyna forced herself to keep it together. They had it. They had it in the bag. They just needed to hold out for a few minutes. They just needed to…

Sweating and breathing heavy, Reyna looked up to sweat some wet strands of hair off her forehead and got hit with direct, laser eye contact from about thirty yards away- Rachel was watching her, with something on her face that Reyna couldn’t quite describe, making Reyna surge with something that she also just couldn’t quite describe…

And Rachel winked. 

And blew a kiss.

Reyna stopped dead.

Lupa lazily regarded her, eyebrow raised, from the side, Hazel shouted something, a rush of blonde went by her, and before Reyna could snap back into action, turn around, keep the panic away, Annabelle was a quarter of the field in front of her.

Reyna raced. And she put her panic into her body, put her soul into her legs, but it was too late, and Annabelle was too close, and Gwen just couldn’t manage to reach that perfect corner kick.

Overtime, and Reyna took herself out of the game. Lupa had said nothing. Reyna figured she herself was going delirious-  _shaky hands, shaky feet, shudders down her spine…_

The Romans managed to win, and Reyna nearly cried in relief. She hated letting teammates down. If they’d lost because of her…

They went to “congratulate” the other team, doing that thing that Reyna always found so childish where they got into two lines and high fived each other. Meeting both bitter glares and sweet smiles, Reyna spotted Rachel as fourth in line. She couldn’t meet the girl’s eye, ignoring her even as she felt tiny, flittering fingers slip from her palm.

And then she felt a paper in that exact palm, and she stopped, halting her entire line, before given a hasty, panicked look back and shoving it in her pocket.  
People looked curiously at her, and her head turned down, flooding with shame she couldn’t show. When she managed to look up again, Rachel was laughing with wonder and admiration. 

At her.

Laughing. Mocking.  _Teasing_.

Wonder. Admiration.

Reyna slowly opened the piece of paper.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare- 918-377-4626. Dare to date me.

Reyna stared at the pun in utter bewilderment and looked around frantically. Her teammates were whispering about her, which was understandable. She hadn’t acted this way since she was nine. 

And then a dam broke within her, and a waterfall of butterflies flooded her insides.

She folded the paper meticulously, stroking the feel, softness, reality of it. The Greeks were dispersing, and Rachel seemed to have disappeared.

Even when her teammates began to interrogate her, she couldn’t stop thinking of emerald eyes.

It’d been…. It’d been…

A… Good day on the field.


End file.
